Currently, one in five physicians in the U.S. is an immigrant, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association. In some specialties, like geriatrics and nephrology, the share of physician immigrants reaches 50%.
The ongoing staffing shortages across U.S.healthcare have led some to call for more open immigration policies that would allow foreign physicians to join the workforce. Yet immigration policies have not adapted to account for American dependence on foreign-born physicians in the workforce, said Kathleen Campbell Walker, immigration practice group chair at Dickinson Wright, a Chicago-based law firm, in an Aug. 26 article in Healthexec.com. Ms. Walker is also general counsel of the AILA.
"In light of figures that make it imperative that we do something to help improve our current physician shortages, we can't seem to get our immigration bus in order to be able to drive it down the road and really make a difference," she said.
Under a current J-1 visa requirement, medical students must return to their home country for two years after completing their residency in the U.S. This prevents hospitals from retaining these physicians after residency. Additionally, if these physicians are married, their spouses usually cannot get authorization to work in the U.S., making permanent relocation very difficult.
In addition, quotas limit the number of physicians that can legally immigrate to the U.S. each year, creating long waitlists. Many of these quotas have remained unchanged in the face of the increased domestic need for physicians.
"Immigration helps us in our national interest by providing critical healthcare, and I do not want to discount the legitimate concerns we have of illegal immigration, but when we allow illegal immigration to basically throttle a solution that helps the rest of us in the United States, then we're just not making sense," Ms. Walker said. "We're not assessing the facts and we're basically removing a solution that could provide critical healthcare."